


forged in the fire

by bookishgypsy



Category: Dynasty (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25795714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishgypsy/pseuds/bookishgypsy
Summary: A post-episode/what-if centering around episode 3x20.
Relationships: Fallon Carrington/Liam Ridley
Comments: 28
Kudos: 76





	1. ashes i've been buried in

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry in advance.

**_I hate to make this all about me._ **

**_But, who am I supposed to talk to?_ **

**_What am I supposed to do?_ ** ****

**_If there's no you..._ **

* * *

_Beep._

_Beep._

_Beep._

The hushed whispers echo from behind him in what sounds like only breathy puffs of air, but he knows better. He knows the nurses and doctors are all whispering about him, about _her,_ all while looking at him with rapt pity. That they’re _sorry_ for him; sorry he had to go through this, sorry he was sitting here for the fourth straight day waiting in completely agony for her to show those baby blues to him once more.

_Beep._

His clammy hand rests in hers, her skin so very pale, so very cold. He grips on tightly as if he’s the only thing tethering her to this world, the only thing keeping her alive.

He just wishes she’d grip back.

_Beep._

He feels his eyes falling, descending into darkness.

Stillness and silence closing in on him.

_Beep._

He jolts awake.

It was impossible to get any sleep with the continuous high-pitched frequencies filling the room.

The constant hum of the heart monitor was the only sense of normalcy and comfort he’d seem to be relying on anymore. The only indicator her heart was still beating in her chest, the only indicator he had that reminded him she was alive. The incessant _beep, beep, beep_ that the machine squeaked out every couple of seconds, irritating and comforting all at the same time; keeping him from getting any decent amount of sleep but reminding him she was breathing at the same time.

He tries to think about the moment where it all went awry, when everything had gone so terribly wrong and strayed so far of course.

They should be _married_ right now.

They should be in the Maldives on the first leg of their _honeymoon._

Sipping rum cocktails on the ocean.

Sleeping in a California king-sized bed in their overwater bungalow.

But now…

Now he gripped on to his _still_ fiancée’s tiny hand, praying to a God he’s not sure he even believed in that she’d pull through this.

That she’d make it out _alive_.

They had forever to look forward to together.

And now…

 _Now,_ he’s not even sure they’ll have tomorrow. ****

* * *

_“Fallon, please,” Liam begs, following her on her escalation up the grand stairs. “Let’s talk about this. Like adults, please.”_

_It only makes her move faster, the clicking of her heels getting louder as she digs them further into the wood floor with more aggression with every step she takes. Her feet land on the second floor, her body skirting right in attempt to move faster from his following eyes, but he keeps up with her, meeting up with her just as she rounds the hallway that leads to her room._

_“I’m not talking to you,” she says turning the corner towards the safe haven of her bedroom._

_He grabs at her arm when he’s caught up to her just outside her door, “Will you even hear me out?”_

_“You lied to me!” She turns towards him, arms crossing against her against her chest. “You didn’t have the decency to tell me you were flying halfway across the world when my family was in that kind of danger?”_

_“I just_ rescued _your family from a Moldavian prison,” he says through clenched teeth. “What is this really about?”_

_“It’s about you lying to me, Liam!” She spins around, opening the knobs with force as she pushes the doors in. Her coat falls off her body, along with her purse. Liam only follows behind her. “We’re supposed to be getting married and you’re flying across the country without telling me where you are!”_

_And then silence._

_The room turns to a complete stillness as they stare at each other with hurt and angry glares without muttering a single word to each other. Her chest heaves up and down and up and down with angry puffs of air escaping between her lips. He breaks first, looking at her with a curious gaze, his eyes boring into hers and she recognizes instantly his look._

_That he’s_ onto _her._

_That she’s deflecting their current situation into something else._

_Because she doesn’t want to get hurt._

_His gaze softens instantly when he gets a good look at her, but she’s quick to look away from him as she’s scared he’ll right through her; even though she’s positive he already had._

_“This isn’t about me lying to you, is it?” He asks the question with such a gentle ease, his voice comforting and familiar despite her current anger with him. “You’re scared.”_

_Her hands fall back against her chest as she scoffs, as if that could shield her from everything.“No.”_

_“It is,” he says his hand reaching out in her direction. “You’re scared. You’re scared that I might not have come back, aren’t you?”_

_She refuses to grab at his fingers, spinning her body around so her back faces him instead. “Liam, get over yourself.”_

_“You’re scared you would have had to do this without me,” he says softly. “That I could have got hurt. That you would have never seen me again. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” His voice is so calm, so gentle when he asks, that she’s almost quick to break; quick to let the tears threatening to fall escape her blue orbs and let him pull her in close and tell her everything was going to be okay. “You’re afraid of losing me.”_

_Her shield goes back up quick, an invisible wall defending her from her emotions before she spins back around to face him, her icy eyes find his when she speaks directly to him. “You can think whatever you want, but you sure as hell aren’t sleeping in my bed tonight,” she scoffs once more, turning away from him as she begins to pull her comforter down on the bed. “You can go sleep on the couch downstairs for all I care.”_

* * *

“Liam,” the voice calls for him, his groggy eyes trying to fully awaken.

Alexis.

Standing off in the doorway, looking more subtle than she usually did. She’s only wearing a pair of sweatpants and a tee-shirt; he’s sure it’s still designer brand, it’s just nothing he’s ever seen his future mother-in-law in before.

“Hi, Alexis.”

He watches Alexis inhale deeply with a shaky breath, glossy eyes filling with tears when she gets her first look at Fallon in the hospital bed. He’d told her on the phone that it was bad, but nothing would prepare anyone for how she looked when they saw it with their own eyes. He knew that from his own experience. “How is she?”

“Critical,” he cringes, barely able to say the words without that burning sensation building in his throat. “But stable.”

“Have you talked with her doctor?” He nods curtly, no strength within him to actual vocalize the response. “What did they say?”

“That her left lung collapsed,” he says, pulling her small hand back into his grip against the stiff sheets. He just looks at her, at how vulnerable she looks; how white and ghostly she seems, how she doesn’t even look _anything_ like Fallon. “She’s intubated right now to give her lungs time to heal and regain their strength.”

He hears Alexis take a sharp intake of breath behind him.

“Her left ankle was broken pretty badly, when the…” He doesn’t want to say it, he doesn’t want to picture her stuck against something so heavy she had no choice but to sit there and endure the pain. “When the bar top fell on her ankle and crushed her,” he finished with a grimace face. “It fractured in three places, they had to perform emergency surgery on it to align her bones to their rightful positions, so it will heal properly” he mutters glancing at that hard white shell wrapped against her leg. “She’s gonna be so pissed that she can’t wear her heels for a while,” he can’t help but grin shyly, brokenly when he realizes the conversation he’ll have to have with her when she wakes up.

 _If she did wake up_ , he reminds himself.

“Well,” Alexis moves forward into the brightly lit room, taking the extra seat on the opposite side of Fallon’s bed. “When she pulls through, the heels will be the least of her issue. That’s gotta count for something right?” There’s a small pause. “What about all the smoke…”

“She’s also suffering from smoke inhalation,” he confirms. “Which the ventilator is also helping with.”

“Is there anything else I need to know about her condition?”

“Just that there’s some second degree burns on her arm,” he motions towards her right arm that’s bandaged up, the entire length of space between her wrist and her elbow.“Honestly, they said she was lucky that she escaped with what she did.”

Everything seems to fall still again, Alexis watching her daughter as her chest rose and fell gently against the bed. Fallon’s matted hair sticks out in all different direction, eyes closed gentle against her face. If it wasn’t for all the machines hooked up to her, he’d just assume she was taking a nap.

“How is everyone else?” He asks it curiously, concerned about them, of course, but no where near as worried as he was about the woman laying right beside him. He can’t even turn his face away from Fallon as he asks, just focusing on the rhythm of her heartbeat, the constant _beep, beep, beep,_ his only saving grace to tell him she was still here with him.

“Kirby didn’t make it,” Alexis says with a twisted expression against her face.

Liam feels his heart sink. “What?”

“They found her trapped under a high beam,” Alexis confirms. “She wasn’t breathing.”

“Holy shit,” he runs his free hand through his hair as he mind starts wandering.

“What if it had been Fallon, Liam?” The tears in Alexis’ eyes pool even faster, he notices a few stray tears escaping the corner as she wipes them away with the back of her hand just as quickly as they fall. “I’ve been a horrible mother. I didn’t give her half the life that she deserved. I thought we’d been making some progress, finally getting to have a second chance at the relationship we never got to have,” the pitch in her voice increases when she gets too choked up to continue. “I’ll never forgive myself if she...” she pauses, not able to actually say the words out loud. “When I’ve never even had the chance to tell her how much she actually means to me.”

“We’d been fighting, you know,” he says softly. “She was mad about me flying to a different country and not telling her. I don’t know, Alexis, it’s all a blur now. It all seems so stupid now that I think back and see where we’re at,” he continues as his fall on to Fallon’s frail body again. “And to think I may never get to tell her I love her again…”

He feels his eyes grow wide, the realization hitting him like a ton of bricks once more that Fallon came dangerously close to not making it, that she was dangerously close to _still_ not making it. That he could have received the same devastating news that Anders had just received about his own daughter, that that news could still come. 

“Sam’s down the hall,” Alexis’s soprano breaks his thoughts from running further off the tracks. “Recovering, but he seemed to make it out the best of everyone. They’re just making sure his oxygen levels are normal again before they let him out,” she continues. “Cristal had a few broken bones in her right leg, but she’ll be just fine.”

He finds himself unable to speak, that burning sensation returning in the back of his throat as tears threaten to fall from the corner of his eyes. He just watches Fallon with rapt attention, a careful eye on her chest and the way it moves up and down, up and down.

 _She’s alive,_ he reminds himself. _She’s breathing._

“She’s gonna pull through, Liam,” Alexis finds her way over to him, resting her hand against his shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. “She’s strong. If there’s anything I’ve learned about Fallon through the years is that my daughter is stronger than anyone I know.”

And the only thing he can do is hold Fallon’s hand and blink away tears he can no longer fight.

* * *

_She sits off in the corner of the Carrington Jet, quiet and subdued as the others chatted amongst each other; laughing and telling jokes about things that didn’t really matter, she assumes. She doesn’t really care, if she’s being honest. She didn’t even really care about this Bachelorette party to begin with, and she’s almost certain the festivities are more for the entertainment of the guests then for her, the actual bride._

_But she can’t find the strength within her to actually care about that right now._

_No, her mind was on much more important things in the current moment, things like Liam and their supposed future together._

_Did they even have a future together anymore?_

_God, she truly can’t believe him._

_The fact that he’d flown to Moldavia without her knowledge after her father and Anders had been captured and landed themselves in a Moldavian prison. The nerve he had, to keep her out of the loop when her family was in danger._

_Putting_ himself _in danger._

_She’s almost positive if it was his family trapped in a foreign country he’d want her to tell him, so what gave him the right to keep her away from the truth? And for him to only excuse himself with the fact that she would have gone overboard and blown it all out of proportion?_

_How_ dare _he?_

_She begins their short plane ride to New Orleans by flipping through the prenuptial agreements she’s had her lawyers whip up on a whim, emailing them specifics she wanted included in the draft but also giving them free range to add whatever they deemed necessary in a situation like the two of theirs. She’s already gone through it once that morning, tabbing the sections she wanted to review for a second time, pieces of the legal document that could be improved upon even further._

**1\. You will treat each other with respect and like adults.**

_She reads that sentence over once, twice. Three times._

_Was she going to far?_

_No. No, she wasn’t._

_He’d_ lied _to her and she needed to be absolutely certain that this didn’t happen again._

_“What are you doing over here all by yourself during your Bachelorette party?”_

_The copper haired Australian’s voice breaks her thoughts, breaking her away from an inner monologue and back into the present: on the Carrington Jet headed west towards Louisiana. The sun glares through the window, still rising from the direction of the Atlantic as they’d barely hit noon._

_“Ah,” Fallon says twirling her favorite black ink pen with her fingers. “A CEOs work is never done, Kirby.”_

_Kirby takes the seat beside her, close but not too close. “I’d hardly call your prenup with Liam a part of your CEO duties.”_

_“I’m just going through it, okay?” Fallon closes up the blue folder binding the large document together carefully against her lap. “You know, to make sure it’s perfect before I finalize it with my lawyers and then let Liam read it and sign it.”_

_Kirby’s eyes furrow together in bewilderment, only eyeing her with a complex look of uncertainty. “Are you really serious with this thing?”_

_“Why wouldn’t I be?”_

_“It’s just a little ridiculous is all,” Kirby mutters, settling herself more comfortably against the back of the leather couch._

_“Ridiculous? How so?”_

_“You guys are getting married, not starting a business together,” the redhead mutters, a slight hiccup of a humorous laugh escaping her lips. “Isn’t a relationship about compromise and learning from each other? Not dictating how the other treats you?”_

_“Well, yes,” Fallon stumbles against her words, uncertain how to respond to Kirby’s clever remark. “But, it’s also about respect.”_

_“Of course it’s about respect,” Kirby explains with a tone that screams_ obviously _, arms flailing around to prove her point further. “But, you writing up this contact, because that’s exactly what it is, Fallon, proves you have no respect for him. It’s quite frankly childish.”_

_“Childish?”_

_“Can you honestly sit here, look me straight in the eye and tell me that you would have let him handle things in the way he deemed best for your family if he told you about Moldavia?” Kirby pauses, but not long enough for her to rebut her with a response. “If you’re not going to allow yourself to learn from each other, to grow with each other, or even allow yourselves to call each other out on your bullshit, then what even are you_ doing _with him?”_

_That strikes a chord; a vibration running through her veins like the strum of strings on an acoustic guitar. It made her take a step back and attempt to reassess the current predicament she was in with Liam. Was she going too far? Surely, she didn’t think so, but when someone like Kirby, who’d barely been able to keep a stable relationship thus far into their somewhat friendship, was saying these things with such earnest and boldness, it made her pause._

_“He loves you so much, but I’m not sure if someone who loved him as deeply as he loves you would draft up something as ridiculous as this.”_

* * *

Time seems to tick by so very slow.

He feels like he’s been here for months, years, in this very hospital watching on in complete agony as his future wife sat ghostly white in that hospital bed. She’s covered in wires, endless machines hooked up to her, her small body currently unable to breathe on its own.

He feels the little box in his pocket digging into his backside, the reminder blinding him further for everything that they had coming up for them; how much happiness and joy this time was supposed to bring in their lives.

He reaches behind him to pull the black velvet box out of his back pocket, opening it with a gentle ease and a slight hiccup in his breath when he gets a good look at the glimmering objects set inside it.

Their wedding bands.

Two identical platinum wedding bands with their names engraved on the inside of the band, save for Fallon’s that also had a diamond stone embedded on it. A touch he added without her knowledge.

They’d picked out their bands together, of course, but she had been eyeing that diamond the entire time they were in the store. She’s told him she didn’t need it on her band when they’d placed their order on the bands, but he’d called back without her knowing only minutes after they’d arrived home.

Add that diamond to Fallon’s band, he’d told the salesman.

Would she even get to see it now?

“Sweetie, I haven’t seen you leave this room once she arrived,” he hears from behind him. Noah. Fallon’s daytime nurse. “When was that last time you ate anything?”

“I don’t know,” Liam shrugs in response when his head turns to find the dark red-haired thirty-something walking in, ready for her hourly round to check Fallon’s vitals. Her hair’s tied in a ponytail today, her computer full of her patients chart set up against a cart with wheels as she rolled it in towards Fallon’s numerous machines. “I can’t remember.”

“Honey, you can go on to the cafeteria and get some food if you want,” Noah’s fingers type slowly against the keyboard. “I’ll take good care for her for the ten minutes while you’re gone.”

“I’m not leaving her.” His voice is hoarse and laced with exhausted when he speaks, having not slept for over forty-eight hours now; because the only thing that currently mattered was Fallon.

Fallon waking up.

Fallon recovering.

Fallon coming home.

“I had a feeling you’d say that,” Noah chuckles, reaching into her pocket nonetheless to pull out a carton of apple juice and a packet of peanut butter crackers. “Brought you some crackers and a juice box from our patient refrigerator,” she says, followed quickly by, “Eat up. Oh, and this stays between us.”

“Thanks,” Liam says with a soft smile, allowing himself to open the plastic wrapped and take a bite at the salty crackers filled with peanut butter. “Any change with her?”

“I’m afraid not.” A sad frown appears on the nurses face, moving her tall figure closer Fallon to get a blood pressure reading. “But she’s stable, and she’s been stable now for more than twenty-four hours, which is a great sign. A really good sign, actually.”

“She’s gonna make it right?” Hopefulness overtakes him with that statement, a type of assurance that floods through him that he hasn’t felt since the moment he got the call about Fallon. “She’s gonna wake up?”

“Her chances look good, sweetie.” She smiles again, freckles standing out brightly against her pale skin, beginning her retreat out of the hospital room. “Just know we’re gonna do everything we can to pull her out of this, okay?”

“Thanks, Noah.”

And when the nurse is no longer visible in his line of sight, he reaches back out to take her hand into his, squeezing gently as the tears made their way down his cheeks as he muttered a helpless, “Please, Fal.”

* * *

_She doesn’t even know how she ended up here._

_She’s in a city she barely knows, surrounded by people she could barely stand, being bailed out of prison by her ex-finance._

_Had she really lost herself this much? She couldn’t have, not with Liam. He wouldn’t have let her stray this far off course - he always kept her grounded, kept her on course. But as her gaze moves back towards the prison cell she’d just spent hours in after shoplifting from a store with these people she would barely even consider friends…_

**_How can he trust you? You go overboard on_ everything _._**

_Cristal’s words play on a loop in her ears, like a broken record spinning ‘round and ‘round and ‘round. Telling her almost verbatim what Kirby has said to her on the jet. That she was acting like a child, throwing a tantrum because things were not playing out in the exact way she’d want them to. Going above and beyond to prove a point to Liam that she was right, that she didn’t deserve to be lied to the way he’d lied to her about Moldavia._

_So much so that she’d go off, gotten herself blackout drunk and married someone she didn’t even know the name of._

_She needed to let go of these control issues, didn’t she?_

_She had to, if she wanted to be with Liam - if she wanted their relationship to last forever._

_If she wanted any sort of future with Liam to work, she needed to surrender some of her drive to be in control, to be the one calling the shots. They were in a relationship, a_ partnership _, she couldn’t sit there and expect him to marry her and have her be the only person who made decisions for them._

_A compromise._

_They needed to sit and talk their differences out, like adults. She couldn’t storm off like she did and blame him for everything. She couldn’t just shut people out like she did, accusing them of not treating her like an adult, but then do the exact thing that proved why they kept certain things from her._

_A carrousel._

_‘Round and a ‘round and ‘round she went, never quite learning how to better herself - only blaming others, instead - because it was easier, because it left less room for her to get hurt._

_She pushes the doors to welcome herself outdoors, the sun just starting to set off in the west, pink and blues blending together like cotton candy against the horizon. Something about the colors, the bright and hopeful feeling the sunset provided her, pushed her to pull her iPhone out of her back pocket and immediately search for Liam’s name in her recent calls. It rings once, twice, three times, before she starts losing hope that he was going to pick up. It goes to his voicemail after the fifth and final ring, leaving her with the ghost of their past few days haunting her._

_The way she’d stormed off angry from him, the way she’d refused to talk to him, the way she kept ignoring his text messages._

_And now…now, he wasn’t even going to pick up the phone._

_She couldn’t blame him, truly, she really couldn’t._

_She just wanted to hear his voice again._

_Apologize to him for how’d she’d acted._

_Talk to him about how she felt like he’d lied to her, but also understanding his point of view, now._

_She just wanted to say she was sorry, that she loved him._

_“Fallon,” Sam calls for her from the curb, beckoning her to join them once more. Their car arrives along the curb to pick them up outside the police station and take them to their next destination, which she was hoping was back to the airport to head back to Atlanta. She’d had enough of New Orleans to last her a lifetime. “You coming?”_

_“Yeah,” she says sadly, making her way towards her friends._

_She blindly wonders if she’ll ever get the chance again._

* * *

_Beep._

The soft murmurs from the nurses station can be heard from out in the hallway, discussing patients with one another. It’s dark in the room, save for the light illuminating the hallway and the screen on the ventilator, her heart rate beating in a consistent manner. That continuous beep still ringing through the room. It’s almost become a normalcy for him now, almost like it’s not even there. Except for the fact it’s louder than anything and it’s the only sound tethering him to Earth and reminding him she’s still breathing.

_Beep._

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” he says softly. “The doctors say you can. That you’re more aware of your surroundings than it seems like you are, but I don’t know,” he laughs lightly, a slight hiccup in his throat that stops him from continuing, the emotions overwhelming him fully and with force. “I’m willing to try anything to bring you back to me though, Fal.”

Some part of him wishes that did the trick, that his simple words were enough to bring her back instantly. But, he knows better. The realistic part of him knows she’s not going to suddenly open her eyes for him just because he started talking to her with simple words.

No, even if she pulled through this disaster, (which the doctors were relatively optimistic about, he hopes not just for his sanity), she had a long recovery ahead of it. Not even just the physicality of it all, regaining her strength, healing those second-degree burns on her arms, the bones in her ankle realigning back to their normal positioning. That was only _part_ of it. She had the psychological parts to recover from, too. He couldn’t imagine the trauma she’d endured being trapped in a burning building, with debris falling on you with no means to escape. He had no idea how long she was conscious for, he couldn’t imagine her watching her world fall to pieces around her with no mobility to get herself out.

“I really hate that we were fighting before this all happened,” he begins. “I hate that we’re sitting here with the unknown before us, that I don’t know if I’m going to see those blue eyes I adore so much ever again.” 

_Beep._

A pause, a slight hiccup in time.

“That I will never get to tell you I love you again.”

_Beep._

_Beep._

_Beep._

“Fallon, please,” he begs with a sense of urgency, unable to stop the tears from falling out of his eyes and down his cheeks. There’s sure to be stains left behind on his skin with the amount of salty liquid that’s been sitting there since he arrived at this hospital. “You have to pull through. I don’t want to do this without you. I can’t do this without you.”

And then everything around him changed in the blink of an eye.

In one moment his hand was in hers, stroking her palm gently in circles, and then there’s a long dull sound echoing throughout the vast space. He noticed it immediately, the change in donut the machine was making. The sound he never truly thought he’d have to hear, the sound he never wished he’d have to hear ever again.

The _beep, beep, beep,_ drawling out in one continuous loop.

It was daunting.

 _Harrowing_.

In a single second the world around him changes as he notices her small breaths have stopped completely. He almost thinks it’s his mind playing tricks on him, that the lack of sleep has finally caught up to him and he’s imagining everything that’s playing out in front of him.

But it’s real.

It’s so very real.

There’s actually a thin green line on the screen, a vivid fluorescent green line sliding horizontally from left to right in front of him as felt his own heart skipping a few beats at his current reality.

A flat and unmoving neon light.

And oh, god that sound won’t _stop._ It digs into his ears violently _,_ humming in his ears like nails against a chalkboard.

No signs of rhythm in her chest.

Still.

 _So_ very still.

The up and down of her chest being his only saving grace these last four days is gone.And suddenly he feels like he can’t breathe, that all the air in his lungs was sucked out and that no oxygen is making its way into his blood stream.

A slew of doctors and nurses rush in an instant, pushing him to the side frantically, yelling at him needed to leave the room. He can’t even form the words to object; he just lets them in, lets them push him to the side and out into the hallway where he watches in the window to the room as these doctors and nurses rip her gown open in an attempt to do everything they could do to save the woman he loves lying in that bed.

The shock cart rolls in behind a second team of doctors that flock into her room with urgent speed, those metal paddles coming out with such force as they perform CPR on her frail and fragile body, hearing them scream _clear_ before the shocks electrocute her throughout her body. He can only watch on in complete horror as the scene unfolds in front of him, a scene he never thought he’d have to witness with his own eyes.

_Her lips leave his cheek with gentle curiosity, smiling at him when she pulls back with her hand still resting gently on his shoulder. There’s something different there, a new sense of need to discover the undiscovered between them. It’s now or never, he knows that, but what surprises him is when she pushes her face towards him first, her lips meeting his in the softest and purest for first kisses._

_A spark ignites inside him, one he’s never felt with anyone else before and that’s when he knows._

_Fallon Carrington was different._

But that memory shakes quick when he hears the word clear echoing in his ears again, realizing how quickly she was falling away from him. That she was flatlining right before his very eyes, no guarantee that’d they would be able to restart her heart and bring her back to him.

The possibility of a future without Fallon becoming so very real in the blink of an eye.

They’re yelling out to each other in that tiny room, shocking her through he chest once more as there’s a slight jolt to her already fragile being. His eyes falter to the screen, that traumatic green line still flashing before his own two eyes.

There’s nothing, no sinus rhythm returning to her lifeless body.

Just…nothing.

Absolute nothingness.

“Please, Fal,” he begs through the shield of glass. “Please.”

This couldn’t be happening.

He was _not_ losing her.

* * *

_She slides the peach diamond back on her finger with ease, finally feeling whole again; happy that a simple piece of jewelry made her feel even just slightly more connected to Liam again._

_She’d fucked up._

_She knew that now._

_Of course it took her having a botched Bachelorette party in New Orleans with people she’d barely even considered her friends, shoplifting at some random store in the French Quarter, and getting drunk off her ass and barely remembering any of the night in the process for her to realize how badly she’d gone and messed it all up._

_Oh, and almost losing her engagement ring, too._

_Taking it off with ease as a barter for Sam, all because she’d been pissed off at him for rescuing her family from a Moldavian prison and she couldn’t bother herself to think clearly about how much that piece of jewelry meant to her._

_It meant_ everything _to her._

 _She_ loved _Liam._

 _She really didn’t want to experience life without him, truly, she’s not sure she could go back to the Fallon she was_ before _Liam showed up. She didn’t like that Fallon. That Fallon was insecure, guarded, afraid to let herself feel happiness. She liked the Fallon she’d become_ now _, more mature, more open, allowing herself be more vulnerable._

_He’d taught her so much, shown her so much. He’d opened her world to new possibilities, expanding her to new horizons she never thought she’d be able to reach. He pushed her outside of her comfort zones while making her feel completely safe all at once. He’d come along and proved to her that she did deserve to be happy, that she could be happy._

_And she_ was _happy._

_Happier than she’d ever been, really; she knew that, So, why was she always looking for something wrong, for something to spin into her control with the possibility of losing everything she’d currently had? She goes to pull her phone out again, ready to give Liam a second call and explain herself and apologize and tell him she was coming home._

_But then she hears a loud bang, the ground beneath her feet shaking uncontrollably._

_“What was that?” Sam is the only one brave enough to ask before she starts hearing the screams echoing throughout the bar, everyone beginning to run in a chaotic frenzy towards an exit - any exit they could lay their eyes on. “What’s going on?”_

_She doesn’t have time to respond before the sounds of glass shattering explodes around her, the room filling with a dark and hazy smoke almost immediately, blurring her vision and causing her to lose track of any of her surroundings._

_“Sam?” She shouts amongst the rest of the patrons screaming all the same, unable to hear anything coherently around her. “Kirby?”_

_There’s a brutal cough that erupts in her, smoke filling her lungs as the puffy grey fills the room with blithering speed. And then a bang, a second bang that rumbles the ground and shakes everything in the room. The bar she’s standing next to cracks with a slicing clamor, wood cracking right down the center as the bar top falls to the ground, trapping her underneath with no sense of her whereabouts._

_She tries with all the might and adrenaline moving in her veins to move, to grab control back at her ankle that’s pinned underneath the heavy wooden bar, but the slightest of movement she makes sends a rippling pain shooting up her leg, so unbearable that she stops the instant it rushes through her._

_And, oh god, the_ heat. _There’s an excruciating amount of heat coming from the left of her, her head rotating in that direction to see the fiery flames moving in on her and rightfully trapping her where she was._

_With no way out._

_She begins to panic, all those years of therapy after her mother left, all those years she’d spent working through anxiety and learning techniques to control it flew out the window at lightening speed as she felt her breathing get heavier and heavier as her brain took control over her; the worst of worst outcomes coming first and foremost, playing over and over and over again in her head as she succumbed to the fact that she had no way out of this._

_She tries to remember all the times Liam would be so patience and kind with her when she was overwhelmed with anxious thoughts, telling her to breath easy. Taking her hands in his and reminding her to breathe in and out, in and out._

_He’d helped her grow so much. He’d made her a better person, a happier person. She tries to follow his words now, tries to dig into his gentle words with slow and easy breaths, but the smoke overtakes her._

_“Liam,” she cries to nothing, to no one, just before a second coughing fit takes over her body and leaves her breathless._

_And then her world is covered in a blanket of darkness._


	2. still smells like smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took me a month to get this out. Life got busy, and inspiration is extremely hard to find right now in these times of Dynasty-less Friday's. 
> 
> I'm trying to find that inspiration again. 
> 
> Enjoy!

**_All the empty disappears,_ **

**_I remember why I'm here._ **

**_Just surrender and believe,_ **

**_I fall down on my knees._ **

**_Oh, hello world..._ **

* * *

_He sleeps in one of the guest rooms after their fight that night._

_The room was grandeur and lavish, as were all the rooms in the manor, and he was by no means uncomfortable spending the night in a different room. No, the queen sized mattress was warm and cozy and the surface was loaded with an endless amount of fluffy white pillows as well as the absolute top of the line bedding linens._

_But it wasn’t the same._

_He’d become accustomed to twirling his fingers through her long strands of hair, the warmth of their bodies close and connected, softly kissing her forehead as she slipped further and further under, while she drifted off into unconsciousness in his arms. The steady beat of her heart becoming more and more even with each breath she took, until she would finally close her eyes and give into the slumber her body so desperately craved after her long days at the office._

_He awakens early the morning after, immediately reaching out for her to pull her in closer to his body, but his arm falls flat against the mattress. His eyes shoot open surprised to find her side of the bed empty when he realizes she’s not on her side of the bed. But that’s when he remembers the previous night. She wasn’t here and he wasn’t even in_ their _bed. She’d been angry, sending him off to sleep in any room of his choosing, as long as it wasn’t theirs. And since she’d returned home so late, he couldn’t find it in himself to let the argument dwell into the early hours of the morning, no matter how much he hated when they went to bed angry with each other._

_So, he’d obeyed without much of a complainant, wandering down the hall for an empty room and happy to pick up on this conversation in the early morning when they’d both had a full night sleep and a clearer mind._

_He throws on a tank top on along with the pair of sweatpants he’d managed to grab before exiting her room last night, before leaving the safety of the guest room and making his way down the hall to their bedroom. Her door is already open, cracked just a smidge so he wanders in without knocking to find her already up, dressed and seemingly ready to start her day._

_“Fal?” She looks up, anything but kindness greeting him in her blue eyes. She only looks up to find the source of his voice, before once again focusing on filling her chosen purse for the day with all of her necessities. “Good morning.”_

_Her eyes rarely falter as she continues filling her bag with her daily essentials, still barely acknowledging his presence as she stays silent while she tucks each item in the bag carefully doing her absolute best to keep her eyes away from him._

_“So, you’re really not speaking to me?” Liam can’t help but let out a humorless laugh at the way she’s acting, because he swore this was something they were past already. He thought she was becoming more communicative with him, he thought she was past pushing those walls up without telling him what was really going on in her head. But every time he thought they were past that, she was certain to prove him wrong and build those walls so high, so sturdy, that he wondered if he was going to be able to crack through them again. “You’re really going to head out with Kirby for the day without even trying to talk this through? You’re_ that _mad at me?”_

_“Yes, I am.”_

_“Wow,” his quick staccato mutters. “That’s really mature, Fallon. God, this is_ exactly _why I didn’t tell you what was going on.”_

_She pivots her body towards him at that, her cool-toned green ensemble sticking out against the warm and soft lighting of her room.“Excuse me?”_

_“You throw a fit every single time things aren’t completely in your reign,” he says, unable to control the way his voice was raising in volume. “If you’re not calling the shots, if you’re not in control, you spiral.”_

_Her eyes shift away from him again. “No, I don’t, Liam.”_

_“Yeah, you do,” he repeats the fact again, but she refuses to look at him. And he knows, her eyes may focus everywhere but him, but her mind isn’t on anything_ but _him and_ them _and their relationship. Because as much as she may hate it, he knew her better than she knew herself. “You deflect every situation into something it’s not. It’s like a kid throwing a tantrum when they don’t get their way.”_

_She takes her empty bag and steps towards her walk-in closet, the click, click, click of her high heels bouncing off of the hardwood floors with each step she took away from him. She returns in moments, offering him only one small glance of defeat before her feet find themselves back at the foot of her bed, slugging her bag over shoulder in one swift motion._

_“Look, I love you. I really, really love you.” Liam reaches his arms out, extending them in her direction and opening his palms for her to place her own pale hands in his. She does, her touch filling him with some sort of hope that she was finally going to open up to him. That she was close to telling him exactly what was going through her mind. “But I thought we were past this,” he hums, rubbing soft circles against her knuckles to keep her close. “At least, I though we working on it. This just feels like we’ve moved nowhere.”_

_“Past what?”_

_“Fallon!”_

_Kirby’s voice from the lower level breaks through their cold and stern glares, ice boring into ice. There’s no sign within her that lead him to believe she’s close to faltering anymore, her bitter stare bleeding right into him as he feels the hope for her letting that ice shatter and melt around them dwindling with each passing second._

_It was amazing how quickly she could build a castle around herself._

_She drops their entangled hands, breezing past him with ease as she exits their bedroom, leaving him there alone with his own thoughts once more to wonder what exactly had just happened._

* * *

Pain.

_Beep._

_Beep._

_Beep._

Excruciating, unbearable _agony._

The worst she’s _ever_ felt in her entire life.

_Beep._

Everything in her aches, an unbearable amount of pressure radiating throughout her entire body that makes her want to just curl up into a tiny ball until it all went away and she felt normal again. There’s a burning sensation on her arm, unexpected and scathing; hotter than anything she’s ever touched with her fingertips before. And then she feels the pressure pooling around the bottom of her leg, heaviness against her ankle that gives her the feeling it’s impossible to lift with her own strength. 

What _happened_ to her?

_Beep._

_Beep._

The sound rings throughout her ears, louder than anything she thinks she’s ever heard. An irritating tick that constantly rung through her, consistently and repetitively with no end seeming near. A buzzing sound that only makes the the aching in her body feel worse than they already were.

God, what was that _sound_?

She winces, trying to shift her body in attempt to alleviate the sharp pains running through her body, but it only causes a chain reaction. Pain starts filling her in areas that weren’t hurting, now screaming out for her to fall back into her previous position to when there was less torture that she could feel.

Her legs, her arms, her head - _everything_ ached with an intense amount of discomfort that didn’t feel like any familiar type of pain she’s felt before.

And then she feels a hand squeeze against hers, noticing now the extra warmth she feels in the palm of her hand from the steady grip that held on to her tightly. 

And then, a familiar voice.

“Fal?”

An instant wave of relief washes over her when she makes the connection that he’s there, with _her,_ holding her hand and being there for her in whatever way she needed. 

_Liam._

Her eyes scrunch together before she allows her body to search for the necessary strength to open them.

_Beep._

“I’m right here, Fal,” his soft voice brings her comfort, familiarity. She feels his hand engulf hers with both of his, an instant warmth filling her veins. “Can you hear me?”

_Yes,_ she wants to yell out for him, but she can’t speak; something preventing her from opening her mouth and verbalizing how she felt. There’s something in her throat, something blocking her airways that stops her ability to cry out for him. And suddenly, there’s a dreaded panic settling in her chest and the beeping of the machine starts becoming more rapid and intense.

_Beep._

_Beep._

Faster and faster and faster.

_Beep._

_Beep._

Bright, white lights.

_Beep._

_Beep._

She’s met with the most luminous and incandescent lights when her eyes open fully.

_Beep._

_Beep._

She can’t breathe, the air in her lungs hitched as she looks around the room in a blinded search for answers.

And more pain.

“Hey, hey,” his familiar touch rests in her palm, a sudden wave of relief already rushing over her when she hears his voice echo beside her. “Look at me. Focus on me, okay?”

She tries to open her mouth to speak when she feels the words become stuck in her throat with no way to escape her lips. His fingers start rubbing tiny patterns against her soft skin, his hand clammy and warm in her grip. She feels her breathing already start to return to normal with his voice, his touch, his presence surrounding her.

“Don’t try to talk,” Liam’s calm voice soothes her in a way she still was terrified by, the way his voice and his voice alone could shrink the pain into a more minuscule feeling; even if she still felt like screaming out in pain. “Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay, I’m right here.”

Her eyes find his, full of love and worry and fear and anxiety; his usually warm and welcome and bright eyes clouded by all this pain that she can only assume she’s caused. She keeps herself focused on him, the blue of his eyes comforting her in a way that brought her back down to a place where she felt more relaxed, if only slightly more.

“I’m going to call your doctor, okay?” Liam’s arm reaches across her body, dread already filling her insides at the thought of him letting go of her. She tightens her grip against his arm, horror filling her eyes when she has a sinking suspicion that he’s going to let go. “I’m not going anywhere,” he swears. “I’m just gonna press the button right here.”

She hears a small click, before he falls back to her side while keeping her hand tucked into his the entire time. His free hand finds its way to her face, cupping her cheek in his palm. She lets herself ease into his movements, trying to allow her body to ease into the pain that doesn’t seem to subside on any account; in fact, it only seems to be growing the more conscious of her surroundings she becomes.

“You’re intubated right now,” he hums, a soft stroke of his thumb to her cheek. Her eyes widen at his words, her mind wandering off trying to remember what had happened for her to end up in this exact predicament she was currently in. “I’m not trying to scare you. Everything’s gonna be okay, alright?”

She winces, the pain still very much front and center in her mind, but she exhales and follows his words; squeezing his hand a little tighter in hers and finding comfort in the way his eyes never stray from her own.

* * *

_“Where’s your lovely bride to be?”_

_Nathan, the dark haired, flamboyant man with a flair for the dramatics steps out from the jewelers back room, the dividing door closing with a satisfying click behind him. He walks straight up to him with confidence and an attitude that was so unique to him and him alone that Liam was certain he would be able spot him in a crowd of thousands anywhere._

_“She’s off on her Bachelorette party weekend in Louisiana,” Liam smiles as Nathan’s feet find themselves closer to him than the previous second. He steps forward to meet the man who’s just a few inches shorter than him, reaching out to shake his hand with a firm and friendly grip. “So, the errands were left to me.”_

_“Lucky you,” Nathan says with a grin. “Well, I suppose I’m just as thrilled to see you.”_

_“No, you’re not.” Liam’s light bellow echos throughout the small jewelers shop, only the two of them gracing the showroom at the current moment. “It’s okay. I know you liked my future wife better.”_

_“I love a girl with taste as exquisite as hers,” Nathan smiles with a flash of his white teeth, clearly bleached to make them as shiny as possible. “That girl knows what she likes and what she doesn’t.”_

_“She likes expensive,” he confirms with a nod of the head. “Speaking of…how are those wedding bands of ours looking?”_

_“Well, if I do say so myself, they’re gorgeous!” Nathan’s cheerful exclamation creates a feeling of excitement that rushes through his veins. “Let me head on back and grab them for you.” He’s gone only a matter of a minute before appearing in front of him again, handing him two small velvet boxes with the bands placed delicately inside. “Here we are.”_

_“These are really beautiful, Nathan,” Liam lets out when he places them both in his hand. Their names are engraved on the inside of the bands in a fancy script, just like they’d requested. And then there was Fallon’s. Fallon’s band had an extra special touch that not even_ she _was aware of yet, something he added without her knowledge to surprise her with on their big day. A small studded diamond placed right on the outside of the band; a small sparkling and shimmering piece that reflected off the sun and created a kaleidoscope of colors. “Wow. You really didn’t lie when you said you were the best in town.”_

_“Your soon-to-be wife knew what she was talking about when she brought you here.”_

_Liam laughs at the accuracy of Nathans’ words. “She always does.”_

_And then suddenly there’s a vibration in his pocket._

_He assumes it’s a text, and he assumes it’s not Fallon since she still wasn’t speaking with him, so he doesn’t make any movement to reach into his pocket to answer it._

_But then it vibrates twice, three times._

_A call._

_He still doubts its Fallon, but he pulls it out of his back pocket briskly, examining the number on the screen carefully nonetheless. It wasn’t a number he recognized, and it wasn’t even a local zip code because the first three digits looked anything but familiar._

_But something inside him shook him enough to pick the call up right away; a sixth sense some may say. So, he did. He slides his finger against the screen, dragging the arrow from left to right while letting out a weary and skeptical, “Hello?”_

_“Is this Liam Ridley?” The voice is feminine and light on the other end. Rushed and distraught, if he’s reading her tone correctly._

_It immediately puts him on edge._

_“This is Liam, yes,” he says. “May I ask who’s calling?”_

_“My name is Miranda, I’m calling from Ochsner Medical Center in Baton Rouge. You’re listed as Fallon Carrington’s emergency contact.”_

_His heart drops. The air in his lungs is gone as he struggles to find air, to find words to breathe back to her. But he falls short of anything coherent as the worst of all possibilities start blazing through his head at rapid fire speed. Nathan looks at him with wide eyes, as if to ask him what wrong because he’s sure it’s visible in his facial features that something had happened. He opens his mouth to speak when he realizes he needs to still ask what exactly was wrong, what happened to Fallon and why they had contacted him in the first place._

_“Yes, she’s my fiancée,” he says. “What’s wrong?”_

_“Fallon was in an accident,” she begins with a slight edge in her voice; the bearer of bad news. “The nightclub she was in went up in flames.”_

_He feels his eyes involuntarily close at her words as he tries to stop the worst of all thoughts from appearing inside his mind. All he can think about is Fallon laying there in a burning building, smoke filling her lungs as the fire took over her body and ended their future before they had any real chance to even let it begin._

_“Please tell me she’s alive.”_

_“She’s alive, Mr. Ridley. And we’re doing everything we can to keep it that way,” she says. “But I think you need to make your way to us as soon as possible.”_

* * *

Her ring.

She remembers trying to find her ring.

She can remember galavanting around town in search of that peach diamond, trying to figure out who she’d married in the process all while simultaneously calling these adventures her bachelorette party. And she remembers _that._ She found her ring, she remembers it was _Sam_ who had gone off and got hitched, thank goodness for herself and her own relationship.

But that’s when things get blurry.

She remembers standing by the bar, she remembers contemplating everything that’d happened in Louisiana, everything that happened with Moldavia. And then she remembers hearing a bang, a long and shaking bang that echoed throughout the entire room.

And then her memory is _blank._

A forrest of fog that won’t clear no matter how hard she searches for the light.

“Liam?” She’s almost afraid to ask, but it’s killing her to know she was injured so badly to have been in a hospital bed over a week, unconscious, with no real sense to how she got there. “What happened to me?”

“Fal,” he lets out her name in a breathy note. “I’m not sure it’s healthy for you to hear this yet,” he begins, he takes her hand that’s already engulfed in his grip and brings it up to his lip to press a gentle kiss against her knuckles. “You’re still recovering and I don’t want to put a hiccup in that.”

“Please, Liam.” She brings their hands to her face, leaning her chin against their knuckles. “All I know is that my ankle is broken, my arm has second degree burns, I was intubated for a week because my lungs were too weak to breathe on their own...” She trails her words off at the end, her tone getting softer with each syllable she spoke, anxiety levels rising inside her at the thought of hearing what actually had taken place. “But I don’t remember how I got here.”

“There was a fire,” he says with an edge of anxiety lingering in his voice. “You were at some nightclub with everyone.”

“I remember that,” she interrupts. “I remember the nightclub.”

“A fuse blew out,” Liam continues softly. His hand drops from hers so he can thread his fingers through her brown curls, which she can only imagine how horrifying her hair looks right now. But the gentleness of his fingers running in and out of her locks was soothing. “It was all a freak thing, really, but,” he says with a hitch in his breath. “It started an electrical fire in the back of the building but…” Liam lets his voice trail off again and she knows it’s because he’s nervous to tell her. She knows it’s because he’s probably reliving it all over again while she lives it out for the first time with him. And she doesn’t want him to hurt, but she needs to know what happened. “Fallon it spread so fast with all the lights and electrical equipment in that place that the whole building just went up in brutal flames.”

_Flames._

She remembers the flames.

But it’s still blurry.

Bodies running haywire and scattering to any which direction to escape that loud bang they’d all just heard.

_“Liam,” she cries to nothing, to no one, just before a second coughing fit takes over her body and leaves her breathless._

“I called out for you,” she says. “I remember calling out your name.”

“They found you by the bar, Fallon. The bar top had collapsed on your legs and your ankle was crushed.” Her fiancé’s voice is angry as he tells her this, but his calm hand finds its way to the side of her face as he cups her cheek in his palm, his thumb rubbing soft patterns against her skin. “Your arm was caught in the flames, those are second degree burns wrapped up there and it’s going to take an awfully long time for those to heal.”

She feels the tears pooling in her eyes to think her body had been that badly battered and bruised. She hadn’t even had a chance to look at herself in a mirror, and she doesn’t want to even picture how transformed she’d probably looked now. She’s always been so confident, so proud of the way she looked and presented herself that she couldn’t fathom having to adjust to whatever scars and bruises she’d have to live with for the foreseeable future.

“Fallon, you almost died.” And then suddenly her focus is back on Liam when that torturous cry escapes his lips, delivering her information that she wasn’t mentally prepared to hear. Information that she probably would never be prepared to hear. There’s tears streaming down his face now and the only thing she can do is reach out with her good arm to wipe away the salty droplets with her fingers. “Fallon, you _did_ die.”

Her hand stop suddenly on his face and she swears her heart stops beating, but the machine doesn’t stop so she knows it’s only a figment of her imagination. “What?”

“You flatlined right in front of me and I don’t think I’m ever, _ever_ going to get that image out my head for the rest of our lives.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence that fills the room, and if it wasn’t for the various machines that she was hooked up to the room would be basked in absolute tranquility. She looks everywhere but him, because she’s completely certain she won’t be able to take the look of pain that fills his retinas right now. He’d barely choked out his last sentence and she knows without a doubt that there would be tears streaming down his face and she doesn’t know how to fix that sadness.

She pivots her head back to his and finds him exactly as she expects - his head hung low with tear stains on his cheeks. “I flatlined?”

“Fallon,” he breaths, with an urgency in his voice she’s not sure she’s heard from him before. “You inhaled so much smoke they weren’t sure if you were going to make it.”

And then she’s back in her own thoughts again.

_They weren’t sure you were going to make it._

To think…this would have all been avoided if she’d reacted in a normal fashion when Liam had taken off to rescue her father from that stupid European country. If she’d just talked to him, like he tried to do multiple times, maybe she wouldn’t have ended up in this situation. Maybe she wouldn’t have agreed so easily to a Bachelorette party weekend in Baton Rouge, maybe she wouldn’t have drank more than she could handle, maybe she wouldn’t have give up her engagement ring so easily as a barter…

“Fallon, there’s something else I need to tell you.”

Her words are barely a whisper when she speaks. “What is it?”

“Umm,” he hums, deliberately pausing time. “There’s no easy way to say this. It’s Kirby.”

“What about Kirby?”

His eyes find hers in the center, attentive and strong. “Kirby didn’t make it out of that nightclub alive.”

“What?”

“Fal,” he grabs at the top of her head, standing up from his chair slightly. He pulls her into him as much as he can, placing a kiss on the crown of her head. “I’m _so_ sorry.”

“Liam,” she manages to push out through her lips. “What if that had been me?”

She isn’t sure what it is - the news about Kirby or being thrown so much information about her current health status that in turn brought on so many emotions to her. The very real fact that she’d just lost a (somewhat) friend in what could possibly be the worst event she’s lived through thus far in her life. Liam’s just about to pull away from here when she realizes she wants him as close to her as possible. She reaches up for his upper arm to grip at him, Liam immediately finding her teary eyes in front of him when looks down at her.

“Please,” she says with desperation. “Lay with me?”

She scoots as far to the edge of the bed as she can, allowing him to pull his legs on to her very small and uncomfortable hospital bed as best he can. His hand finds hers against the sheets, gripping it tightly and lacing their fingers together. Fallon curls herself into his arms as best she can with all the wires still dangling on her chest, finding comfort in the way she can hear his heart beat steadily beating in his chest.

* * *

_He’d been driving for hours._

_Seven long hours in endless traffic, pushing himself over the speed limit at any given chance to get himself to her faster. Driving himself through four states and darting in and out of the moving cars on the highway when his end goal remained getting to her and being by her side._

_The jet would have no doubt been a faster method of transportation, he knows that, but the jet was already parked at its gate in Baton Rouge. He could have waited for it to make its way back to The Peach State, he knows he could have. But by the time it would have gotten clearance for take off, the time it would take to land in Atlanta - then do it all over again on the way back to Baton Rouge allotted for a lot of time that he didn’t want to waste sitting around when it was Fallon he was trying to get to._

_He throws his car haphazardly into the closest parking spot he can find, not even caring if the vehicle was inside the white lines before throwing his door open and rushing towards the entrance of the hospital that’d called him what felt like years ago. He spots the first person he can behind the desk, feeling completely disheveled in his inability to be by her side, no way to hold her hand while she was going through everything they were doing to her._

_He can’t imagine what he looks like to everyone as he barrels through the doors. There’s a splotch of liquid on his shirt from the Red Bull he spilled onto himself only a mere hour ago, trying to keep himself hydrated along the drive but missing his mouth completely. He knows his hair must be disheveled from the infinite number of times he ran his hand through his hair on his drive over - one of the habits he always fell into when he was anxious and stressed. Fallon was the one who pointed that out to him one day when he was getting close to one of his deadlines._

_Fallon…_

_He worries he took too long, worries that in those excruciatingly long seven hours he’d been driving that something terribly wrong could have happened to her._

_“I got a call about my fiancée,” he says breathlessly. “Where is she? What room is she in? Where’s my fiancée?”_

_The blonde turns to him immediately. “What’s your name sir?”_

_“Liam Ridley,” he gets out between huffed breaths, still trying to regain the air he’d lost from his run into the front doors. “I’m here for Fallon Carrington” Her long acrylic nails start moving against the white keyboard as she begins typing the name he’d just given her into the computer system, but it’s simply not quick enough for him. “Please,” he begs. For a moment he contemplates throwing himself over the counter and looking up her information all on his own. “Where is she?”_

_“I’m looking her information up, sir,” she says with such a calm demeanor, he isn’t sure how she kept it up with his impatience.“Your fiancée just got out of emergency surgery and is currently being moved to her room.”_

_His eyes widen in response. The thought of Fallon having to go through surgery without him there to hold her hand, which the realistic part of him knew he wouldn’t have been able to do anyway. He just wishes he could have been there, reassuring her, whispering sweet nothings in her ear and telling her everything was going to be okay. “Surgery?”_

_“Her ankle was badly broken at the nightclub and it needed immediate attention for it to be able heal properly,” she explains. “Otherwise, she would have been in an excruciating amount of pain.”_

_“Do you know what happened to her? What happened at the nightclub?”_

_“Have you had a chance to speak with her doctor over the phone yet?” For a good minute, before he even has time to really process what she’d just said to him, he stares at this nurse and wonders how she can remain so calm, so collected when his heart is close to exploding inside of his chest from the amount of panic that fill his veins._

_“No, no,” he shakes his head from left to right. “They only told me to get down here as soon as possible.”_

_“I think you’d be better off waiting to hear from her doctor when she’s in her room, sir,” she explains softly. “All I really know is that there was an electrical fire and that there were multiple fatalities,” her voice is soft and he feels all the air leave his lungs when he’s left with no true answer. “I’m sorry, I am, but I can’t provide you with anymore information myself. I know this is a scary and delicate moment for you, but you are better off waiting to hear all this news from her doctor.”_

_Fatalities is the only word that keeps ringing in his ears. “Oh my god.”_

_“She’s going to be in room 313, up on the third floor,” she continues. “If you want to make your way up there and meet her and her team there, that would be fine with me.”_

_“Thank you,” he says, feeling the emotion sting in the corner of his eyes. “Thank you.”_

_He turns around and spots an elevator, riding it up the two floors._

_There’s a man in a white coat stepping out of her assigned room just as he rounds the corner._

_“Excuse me,” he steps closer to the dark haired men. “Are you Fallon’s doctor?”_

_“Yes, I’m Doctor Drake,” he says extending his hand for Liam to shake; he does. “How can I help you?”_

_“I’m Liam, her fiancée,” he states. “What happened to her? Is she okay?”_

_“Your fiancée is extremely lucky, Liam,” “With the amount of smoke she inhaled before she was pulled out of that building, I was surprised to find her still breathing when she was brought in to me.”_

_Liam can only run a hand through his hair in distress. “Is she going to be okay? Is she going to make it?”_

_“She’s stable right now,” Doctor Drake says. “Critical, but stable, which is a good thing,” he finishes. “She did just get out of emergency surgery to repair the bones in her ankle, which should have no issue healing now that everything is back in their correct positions.” The doctor pauses a moment between his sentences. “There are some very, very bad second degree burns on her right arm,” he begins. “They have been treated as well as they can and the rest will be up to her body.”_

_“So, what’s next?”_

_“Well, she is unconscious right now, which might honestly be the best for her at this given moment so her body isn’t utilizing strength and pulling it away from her recovery,” the doctor begins with confidence. “Right now, I’m most concerned with the amount of smoke she inhaled, as she wasn’t pulled from the building right away.” The image is back. Fallon laying helpless in a burning building filling up with smoke. His eyes involuntarily close in pain as the image becomes more vivid in his head. “I currently have her intubated to give her lungs the proper amount of time they need to heal,” he says. “When she wakes up on her own, we’ll asses and see what to do from that moment.”_

_“Intubated?”_

_“When you go in and see her, it might be scary to see her with those tubes in her mouth, but sir, it’s the best for her body right now.”_

_Liam points to the room when he asks, “Can I go in?”_

_“Visitors in the ICU are usually not allowed in patients rooms past visiting hours,” the doctor begins with a weary voice. “But seeing as you’re engaged, that will be no problem.” Liam hears his sigh of relief when the words finish rolling off the doctor’s tongue. “You will need a special ID on you at all times so we know you’ve been cleared for full access to this floor. I’ll get one of the nurses to get on that for you.”_

_“But I can go in right now, right?”_

_“Of course,” he says while stepping to the side to allow Liam access to the room. “It’s probably going to be at least 24 hours before she even tries to open her eyes, but of course, you are welcome to be with her.”_

_“Thank you,” Liam breathes. “Thank you for saving her.”_

_“I’m going to do everything I can do to keep her alive, Liam,” he says. “You have my word.”_

* * *

“Your oxygen levels are good,” Doctor Drake confirms with a nod of his head as he types her vitals into her patient file.

She sighs in annoyance at his words. “Great, can I go home then?”

His eyes narrow together with a crease in his eyebrows as he looks down at her in her extremely uncomfortable bed. “I’m not sure we’re there just yet, Fallon.”

“I want to go home,” she whines, throwing her head back against the stiff pillow.

“And you will,” the dark haired doctor smirks. He takes the dark blue blood pressure cuff and wraps it around her upper arm, before squeezing that tiny black ball of air. This routine she was currently stuck in was becoming all too mundane for her. Every hour, one of her nurses would be in her room to check her vitals all over again. It didn’t matter if she was fast asleep, either, they would wake her up just to make sure all her numbers were in a positive trend, making sure there were no signs of a concussion or any other possible brain injuries. Injuries that could easily appear after such a traumatic event, even if days later. “I just don’t feel comfortable releasing you with no care plan in place.”

“So, let’s make one,” she tells him while he takes that navy blue cuff off her, done with his reading. “You know money isn’t an issue here, so just tell me about this super important care plan you keep talking about so we can get me the hell out of here.”

“Blood pressure’s good by the way,” he says, choosing to ignore her insistent nagging of her wish to be released from the hospital.

“I’ve been stuck here for two weeks,” she informs him.

“I’m very well aware, thank you,” Doctor Drake says with a sarcastic grin. She _hated_ that sarcastic grin he throws her, the same one she’d been looking at for the past fourteen days. “I’ll see you when I make my rounds again in a few hours, alright?”

“Thank you, Doctor Drake,” Alexis chips in from her spot on the corner, having had remained silent while he performed his tasks that needed to be done. Her mother’s blue eyes finds her identical ones before she speaks again, throwing her a look of comfort but also of sympathy as she knew how hard it was for her to be stuck at that kind of place, without even knowing for how long. “Fallon will be in a better mood when you see her later.”

“I doubt that,” Doctor Drake says over his shoulder as he walks out of her room. 

She’d been moved from the ICU Wing the day before, and it had been such a relief to not have as many nurses moving in and out of her room all hours of the day. She understands _why_ she was in intensive care, but she has to say she’s resting much more comfortably and much more peacefully in the room she’s in now. Doctor Drake even told her that they didn’t need to monitor her heart rate twenty four hours a day anymore, which had been one of the biggest reliefs to not hear the annoying beeping sound throughout the entire day.

The only thing she was still dealing with, much to her dismay, was the IV filling her veins with fluid. She didn’t like it, and she made damn sure that everyone assigned to her care knew it, too. But, they had made it pretty clear she wasn’t getting rid of that thing until she walked out that hospital. As if being pushed in a wheelchair down the hospital’s hallways and out into the garden every morning for her daily dose of vitamin D wasn’t enough, she had to take that IV bag _everywhere_ with her. The small plastic bag hanging from the metal rod right by her side, showing how vulnerable and fragile she was to anyone that walked by, as the drops of saline ran down the thin catheter attached to the back of her hand.

“I want to go _home.”_

“You almost died, Fallon.” Alexis stands herself up to move to a chair closer to her now that the room was empty save for the two of them. “You’ll go home when the doctor clears you.”

“I want to go home _now_ ,” she insists.

“I’m not even entertaining this conversation anymore,” Alexis says. “You might not have even came home after this incident. Be grateful you’re alive to do so.”

“Where’s Liam?”

“I sent him down to the cafeteria to get something to eat. You were napping and he needs to make sure he stays healthy, too. Since I _know_ he hasn’t been taking care of himself while he’s been looking after you these last few weeks,” her mother says. “He’s been a wreck, you know. He hasn’t left your side and I’m not sure how much longer he can survive on peanuts and chips and soda from the vending machine across the hall.”

“I know,” the words she says come out so softly, but hit her like a ton of bricks. Because she _knows_ he hasn’t left her side, she _knows_ he’s not eating and sleeping properly because of her. She’s still trying to figure out _why_ he’s doing this all for her when she’d been less than nice to him the days leading up to this whole mess. “We were fighting before this. Did he tell you?”

“No,” Alexis says simply, but curiosity is laced in the word nonetheless. “What were you two fighting about now, Fallon?”

“Now?” Fallon’s eyes open in shock at the words her mother just lays down for her. She doesn’t like the implication there, doesn’t like that even Alexis, who’d barely paid attention to her relationship with Liam seemed to be fully aware that they had stupid, petty little fights about things that really shouldn’t even matter. “What do you mean _now?_ ”

Her mom’s hands fly up in defense, but it’s light and playful. “It just seems like there’s always _something_ , is all.”

“I’m sure you heard about Moldavia,” Fallon begins when she decides to just get it all out there. It’s not like she had Liam to talk to about this one, and it’s like she was home in Atlanta to pick and chose who she wanted to talk to. If she wanted to talk this out…her mother was her only option right now.

Alexis confirms that with a nod of her head. “I did.”

“And how Liam went to rescue Blake and Anders from prison there.”

“Yes,” Alexis says in response. “What are you getting at here?”

“Liam didn’t _tell_ me that he was going to Moldavia,” Fallon says softly as she remembers it so vividly in her mind. The way Sam had let it slip and Liam had no choice but to tell her where he’d been all day. It makes her wonder…would he have told her at all? She wants to believe that answer is yes. “I think I overreacted when I found out.”

“It depends what you mean by _overreacting_.”

“I might have shut him out completely, ran away on this Bachelorette weekend to avoid him, and could have possibly drafted a prenuptial agreement that stated he needed to treat me like an adult.”

“Fallon!”

“I know,” she sighs in defeat. “I regret it. I _really_ regret it. And I can’t even blame him for not telling me because I reacted in the same exact way he expected me to,” she says. “I overreacted and made it all about. Just like I always do,” her words trail off into almost a whisper. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Talk to him about it.”

“How?” Fallon asks this with sincerity. “How do I tell my future husband that I drafted a prenuptial agreement for the two of us that’s basically a written contract for our marriage that tells him how he needs to treat me and how he needs to behave?”

“Well, you could always skip that part.”

“No,” Fallon says immediately. “I’m telling him the truth.”

“That was a test,” Alexis says with a grin. “You passed.”

“Seriously, mom,” Fallon begs. “How do I talk to him?”

“Just like you did with me just now,” Alexis says, reaching to grab her hand in hers with a gentle touch. “You’ve got to be wiling to be vulnerable with him. To be open and honest and be willing to work through these things together,” she tells her. “He’s about to become your husband, sweetheart, and you need to be able to tell your husband these kind of things. I know I’m not one to give you advice about marriage but if there’s one thing I can tell you, it is not to start one with a lie hanging over your shoulders.”

She doesn’t have time to respond to her mother before she hears Liam’s laugh right outside the door, along with a slight chuckle from Doctor Drake. They both come wandering in together, Liam holding a bottle of water and a brown paper bag sure to be filled with something with substance for him to eat for lunch. They turn and look at each other with a glare that says they know something she doesn’t know.

“What’s going on?”

Doctor Drake steps forward first. “How do you feel about getting out of here?”

“Really?”

“Really,” he says. “I told you, you just needed to be patient. I’ve arranged plans with a doctor back in Atlanta to take over your case and care. I think a short plane right back will be safe enough for you at this given time. So, yes. You can return home.”

“When do I get I go?”

* * *

_He swears his heart stops beating in his chest the moment it all happened._

_Everything had been fine, everything had been normal; well, as normal as it could be given the current circumstances. She was breathing, her heart monitor beeping steadily and consistently as he held on to her hand to keep her close, to make sure she could feel his touch even if she couldn’t see him._

_And then suddenly everything wasn’t okay._

_In the blink of an eye, her machine goes haywire and that rigid green line has gone flat. No plateau’s are moving up and down and up and down anymore, and hears a cry for help coming from the nurses station just outside her door with the shout of ‘Code Blue, Code Blue.’_

_He tries to gasp for air, wondering if all the oxygen in his body had escaped him, trying viciously to breathe fully. The sudden loss of air radiates throughout him and seems to get more and more crushing with each passing second. He breathes in, he breathes out. Repetition, he has to remind himself - breathing in for four seconds and releasing that carbon dioxide back out in six seconds._

_There’s a sob in the back of his throat that gets caught, before it finally escapes him in a broken cry. His hand gets tangled in his hair as he pulls at the short strands, trying to give himself anything to feel but the brokenness that’s currently filling his soul._ ****

_There’s a rush of people who fly into her room in an instant, doctors and nurses zooming right past him with only one mission on their mind: save his fiancée’s life. He doesn’t want to let go of her hand, but one of the nurses tries to push him away, telling him he needed to leave._

_“Mr. Ridley,” she says calmly. “You need to leave.”_

_“I’m not leaving her, no,” he cries out in desperation. “No, I need to make sure she’s okay.”_

_“You’re not doing her any good by getting in our way.” The nurse was petite, but she managed to push him back into the hallway. Or maybe it was just the helplessness building inside him when he took her words to heart and realized he really couldn’t do anything here to save her. “Let us do what we can to bring her back.”_

_It was out of his hands._

_Suddenly his body is floating further and further away from Fallon and he can’t get to her no matter how hard he tries. He only can watch through the transparent glass window that peeps into her room, watching as their future seemingly slips away from him in the blink of an eye._

_His worst nightmare starts to become a reality as they pull out the code cart, ripping her hospital gown off of her body in one swift motion._

_He can’t help but stare at his future wife’s lifeless body as they perform CPR on his her, thinking back to all the nights he’d lay his head against her breasts and take comfort in the way her heart would beat steadily in her chest. The way she’d run her fingers through his hair and try to calm one of his viscous migraines, or help him relax after a stressful day of writing. The way her fast heart rate would slow and even out after they engaged in a night filled with love, excitement and passion. They way her laugh would bellow against him when they curled up beside each other and watched a quirky romantic comedy._

_He wonders how it was even possible to go from moments like those, to what he was witnessing right before his very eyes when he thought those were the kind of nights he’d be cherishing with her forever._

_They place the paddles against her chest with little consideration to how extremely weak and fragile she appeared to be, desperate to restart her heart once more. One of the nurses performs CPR on her, pushing down against her chest in the manner that he’d been taught once, too, when he was certified in the task back when he was a teenager._

_“Clear!”_

_The way Fallon’s body jumps against the sheets, lifeless and still, before just sinking back down against that hard mattress again…it breaks him. He can’t help the sob that escapes him when she falls back against that stark white color and the monitor rendering her heart rate indicate that there is still no sinus rhythm, no sign of life._

_The nurse begins pressing heavily against her chest again with another round of CPR before those metal plates shock her body once again._

_The nurse begins pressing heavily against her chest again with yet another round of CPR before those metal plates shock her body once more. But, again, there’s no heart beating in her chest as he watches that bright, lime green line move in a completely horizontal line. They move to begin the vicious cycle again, pushing her chest up and down and up and down before shocking her body with that electric charge. The action is followed by a harrowing silence that follows as everyone in her room looks up at each other, soft whispers making their way around the room as her doctor looks up at the clock. Doctor Drake rips the vinyl blue gloves off his hands as he starts to make his way towards him._

_No,_ he thinks _, no. No, it can’t be._

_No._

_Fallon wasn’t dead._

_But she just lies there…lifeless._

_And no one was doing anything._

_Why weren’t they doing anything?_

_“Mr. Ridley,” he hears. “I’m so sorry, but we tried everything... I’m so sorry but there was nothing we could do.”_

_“Because you didn’t do enough!” He runs his hands through his hair, pacing back and forth in a small square. “Why did you stop?”_

_He covers his mouth with a trembling hand, as if trying to prevent the scream that so desperately wanted to come out of him, but he simply couldn’t find the strength within him to let it out. He looks behind him through that glass window, the remaining nurses unplugging all the machines she was hooked up to, covering her body with a stark white sheet as the reality of it all hit him once again in full force._

_“Mr. Ridley,” Doctor Drake says, but it sounds so distant._

_When he looks up, the doctor is out of sight and he’s suddenly alone in a bright white room._

_“Mr. Ridley,” he hears again. “Mr. Ridley.”_

_And then he’s awake, his body jolts out of his seat and his eyes immediately move to his right to find Fallon. He’s relieved to find her there, comfortably resting in the same position he’d left her in before he drifted off to sleep. Her chest is rising and falling with the help of the oxygen she’s currently being treated with._

_But she’s alive._

_He brings his hand up to touch her face, her warm skin bringing him a relief he didn’t know was possible. The shock of the nightmare still shakes him to his core, finding it difficult to rid of that horrifying helplessness that filled his entire being. He leans his body forward, doing his best to be mindful of the wires laying against her fragile body, resting his head against his chest to hear the steady rhythm of her heart himself._

_And it’s there, beating slowly and evenly and steadily._

_Just like it should be._

_She’s_ safe _._

* * *

“I can’t believe you bought a baby monitor,” she groans when she takes notice of the object on their bedroom table.

“It was necessary for me to be able to keep a close eye on you.”

“It’s a little creepy, babe.” she smiles against his chest. She takes comfort in the way fingers thread in and out of her hair, twirling her soft curls against his fingers as he does his best to calm her aching head and lull her to sleep.

She was so happy to be home again. And no, it’s not like life had returned back to normal by any means, as she was still getting daily visits from a home care nurse and was routinely going into a specialist Doctor Drake had set her up with. But it was better than being holed up in a hospital bed, especially when her bed was _so_ much more comfortable than the one they’d provided her with.

Even more so, she liked that Liam could lay beside her and hold her close in this bed.

He’d been so patient with her, so calm - being there for here at each and every turn when she was holed up in that hospital bed in Louisiana. Without even a question, making sure she was okay and had everything she needed for the long recovery she had ahead of her. It’s quiet and dark in her room. save for the lamp on his side of the bed that’s dimmed down to the bare minimum; just enough light for them to make their way around the large room should they need to.

And all she can think about is how she didn’t deserve any of his kindness.

And still, he was there for her - no questions asked.

Her head’s settled on his bare chest, letting the warmth from his body move through her and bring her a level of peace and serenity she’d only ever been able to feel with him. Her eyes flutter shut when she feels his hand move to the small of her back, starting to run circular patterns near her spine. tingles moving through her at the touch.

There’s no words spoken between them, utter silence dwindling around them as she’s left to her own inner monologue. She hates how her mind wanders back to before everything happened, before this accident when they weren’t in exactly the best place as a unit.

She thinks about how they’d been fighting before all of this.

And how it was all _her_ fault.

Everything that had transpired between them before her bachelorette party had been eating at her inner core since she saw his gentle eyes starring back at her in that hospital room. She remembers waking up in a complete and utter panic, having no recollection of what had happened or where she was. She remembers how everything in her body had ached and _burned_ and hurt in a way things had never before. She remembers when she tried to speak and her words got stuck in her throat before he’d looked at her with patient blue eyes and told her about the tube in her throat.

And she has to ask herself, what exactly where they fighting about?

But she remembers too clearly: over Moldavia and prenuptial agreements, two things that really didn’t need to put much of a burden on them as a couple, but she’d let it become a burden regardless. Overreacting in the way he feared when he held back the truth about his whereabouts, rescuing her family from a prison in a foreign country.

And no, she wasn’t thrilled that he lied to her.

She didn’t like that he chose to keep his location and mission disclosed from here when they were about to embark on their future together. In hindsight though, seeing her reaction to it all when she found out, she understands why he did.

Because she did what she always did.

She turned the whole situation into something about her and spiraled when she wasn’t in complete control of a situation. And in turn, it led to her being angry and frustrated; unwilling to talk it out with him like a mature adult would do and she ended up on a weekend trip that she really had no desire to be apart of in the first place.

And then…

Then she’s almost died.

She supposes that’s something that would change anyone’s mindset, something that would require your entire way of thinking and force you to look at things through a new lens. Even though she hated that it took an experience like this for her to actual reset and realize just how much she’s blown everything out of proportion. Because maybe if she’d just talked with him like a responsible adult in the first place, then maybe she wouldn’t have ended up in a life or death situation. 

“I can _hear_ the thoughts racing through your mind right now.”

“Sorry,” she says against the steady beating of his heart, her perfect lullaby.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “I just feel really overwhelmed.”

“It’s okay to be overwhelmed right now. Your doctor said that was to be expected.” She feels his lips move against her forehead when he speaks, hot air settling against her skin. “You just went through a very traumatic experience. It’s going to take a while for you to heal physically and mentally from this all.”

“I guess,” she shrugs against him, his arms tightening around her.

“I’m going to be here for you every step of the way,” he says to her softly. “You know that right?”

“Yeah, but _why_?”

“What do you mean why?”

“I don’t deserve this after the way I treated you,” she slips the words out with a hint of frustration building inside her.

“Deserve what?”

“Deserve _you_.”

The words hang between them like a barrel without a gun.

“I’m sorry,” her voice is so soft, barely above a whisper. “I really am sorry that I went crazy again before everything happened.”

“Hey, hey,” he says, turning her over gently so he could see her face to face. He leans his hand forward to cup her face in his palm. “Everything’s okay, Fal. Everything worked out. You’re right here,” he says in the most gentlest of tones. “Right here with me,” he finishes. “And that’s all that matters anymore. Everything in the past isn’t important to me anymore.”

“It’s not though, Liam,” she sighs, eyes closing in defeat. “I keep messing up time and time again and I’m quite frankly not sure how you’re still here. With me. I’d be exhausted.”

His thumb brushes her cheek, friction electrifying her just as strong as when they’d first met. But it doesn’t terrify her anymore, no; that feeling brings her comfort and calm. He lifts her head up off his chest in the gentlest manner, carefully forcing her to pull herself up off his chest and meet his eyes. And when blue meets blue in the middle, she’s overwhelmed with the rush of emotions she feels for him, overwhelmed with the amount of love that's burning in his eyes for her.

It centers her.

_Levels_ her.

It brings her back down to Earth and makes her feel human again.

Vulnerable.

“If I didn’t go and act like I did, we wouldn’t be here.” Her eyes open at the circular motions against her face, her deep blue orbs boring into his when she lets herself open them again. “I wouldn’t have gone to that stupid Bachelorette party, I wouldn’t have been in New Orleans searching for my engagement ring and I wouldn’t have been trapped in that burning building,” she continues, aggression building in her voice. “Why do you stick around?”

“Because I love you,” he mutters with the smallest amount of projection in his tone, the words meant for her ears only. “That’s why I’m still here. It’s why I’ll _always_ be here.”

Her hand finds his in the darkness, gripping on tightly, as if he was the only thing in the world that could save her. She sinks herself into his side, tugging her body closer as she nestles her head into the crevice of his neck, his warmth filling her instantly with a calm she’d felt with no one but him.

She feels safe.

It feels like _home._


End file.
